After the revolution, p.22
After the Revolution, page 22
“Fuck that noise,” he said without meaning to. Good God, I’m so high.
“What?” Manny sounded confused and perturbed.
“Oh shit, sorry, man,” Roland rubbed his eyes, a little dazed from the opium. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“I am the only other person in this car,” Manny said.
“Yeah but, y’know. I’m high as shit. Words come out sometimes, and they aren’t meant for anyone. They just happen.”
The car slowed and Manny pulled over to the shoulder of the cracked old highway. When the car came to a stop he put his head in his hands and breathed in and then out very slowly. It took Roland a moment to realize the kid was going through a panic attack. He’s never done anything like this before, of course he’s terrified. Roland wondered if he should do something to comfort the kid.
“You know,” he said, “I’ve killed about twelve-thousand armed people.”
Manny turned to stare at him. He looked shocked, but—Roland noted with satisfaction—the statement had disrupted his panic. “Wh-what? What the…”
“I mean, give or take a handful,” Roland continued. “I burned my brain’s kill counter out with Krokodil and cheap vodka a while back.”
“Why would you tell me this? Why would you think this would help?”
“Because,” Roland said, “we’re about to go into a very dangerous place together. You’re scared you’re going to die. And I want you to know, however many armed nutjobs are in that city, I can murder them. All of them.”
Manny stared at him. He still looked terrified, and vaguely pissed, but his heart rate was steadier. His breathing had slowed. Roland declared his gambit a success.
“Ok,” the kid finally said. “That’s actually comforting. Thank you.”
There was silence for a beat, and then Roland spoke again.
“That all said, I’d prefer not to kill anyone. I’d really prefer that. I was on a pretty good no-murder streak until a couple days back. I’m trying to stay on the wagon. So, uh, talk well. Be a good face-man. This’ll all be easier if I don’t have to commit murder.”
Manny looked a bit nervous again, but he popped the car into drive and rolled back onto the highway.
“I’ll do my best,” he said.
They were an hour outside of Dallas when they hit the first checkpoint, and the Kingdom’s guards ordered them out of the truck. Roland stepped out with his hands up. Manny did the same. The guards scanned them, verified their status as Republic citizens and then the questioning started.
“What brings you back to the Heavenly Kingdom?” their leader, a fat man with a Kalashnikov, asked Manny.
“We heard about the amnesty,” Manny replied, “and we thought it sounded good. We want to live under the rule of God.”
“Hmm,” the fat man grunted. “So you’re both good, God-fearing men then?”
“Yes sir,” Manny nodded. “Of course. And Praise be to God for the victories you’ve won here.”
The fat man sniffed at the air and looked over to his partner.
“I’m not wild about another spic in here. Hansen, you think we need any more Mexicans?”
Hansen shrugged, “Orders say the faithful are all welcome.”
“Yeah,” the fat guy continued, “if they’re faithful.” He turned back to Manny. “Why’d it take a couple of devout men like yourselves so long to make a break for the Heavenly Kingdom? We’ve been at this fight for a while, y’know.”
“I, uh, I mean we were scared, and we weren’t sure what to believe–”
“What you’re supposed to believe is the word of God,” the man snarled. “And that’s clear as day to everyone who lives inside the Kingdom.” He’d looked back at his men and smiled an evil wolfy grin. “Hansen, Molloy, I think we might need to question these two more intensively. Radio command and–”
That was the last thing the fat man said, probably ever.
Roland shoved a hand into the Martyr’s mouth, pulled downward, and shattered his jaw in four places. Then he leapt into the others. It went quickly. He gouged eyes, broke jaws, severed tongues, and then started in on their limbs. By the end of it, all four men were still alive, but none of them were in any shape to report on what they’d seen.
Manny vomited several times.
“What happened to doing your best, Manny?” Roland asked, more irritated than angry once he’d finished. The kid recoiled. Roland realized Manny had started to shake a little. He also realized there was still part of a man’s ear in his mouth. Aw hell, you scared him.
“Sorry kid,” he said, and squatted down next to Manny. “Look, the odds were always good that this first try was gonna be a scratch. The good news is, they’ve got other checkpoints. We’ll hop on the access road and find the next one. It’ll be fine.”
“What did you do to–” Manny started.
“I stopped them from talking,” he said, very quickly. “No one’s dead. They’ll be, uh,” he glanced down at the burbling, bleeding mess of shattered humans, “…they’ll be aight. But we need to move now, before someone else comes along and I’ve got to break them too.”
Roland popped open the cab so he could change into a clean set of spare clothes. He was grateful that Skullfucker Mike had packed them bags to lend their story extra verisimilitude. Manny changed too, and once his hands stopped shaking they rolled off to the next checkpoint. Roland tried not to think too much about the men he’d just broken. It helped that one of them had been an asshole. It helped that none of them had died. But still…
They hit the next checkpoint eight minutes later, and things went much better this time. For one thing, it was busier. There were already a dozen other cars in line when they pulled in. The guy who questioned them was less of an asshole and he seemed to buy Manny’s claim.
“We weren’t brave enough to make the journey until now. But we prayed all night about this. I know it’s the right thing to do.”
Roland had to fight to avoid rolling his eyes. The line worked, though. The man at the checkpoint waved them in and issued them a temporary transit pass.
“This is good for six hours,” the checkpoint officer said. “That’s plenty of time to find the immigration center and report in. If you’re caught driving around the Kingdom after that, it won’t end well for you.”
They drove on, but it was slow going after the checkpoint. The roads into Dallas were choked with ruined vehicles and actual traffic. It looked as if hundreds of people had taken the Heavenly Kingdom up on its amnesty offer. Roland couldn’t fault them for that. The Kingdom seemed to be winning.
As they rolled toward Plano, they were stopped regularly by patrolling Martyrs and asked to present their papers. But bit by bit, they made their way onto and through the packed and crumbling highways of old Dallas. At one point, they found themselves in stalled traffic on Highway 75, overlooking the cratered ruins of the Lakewood Blast.
He felt cold October air. He smelled barrel fires and heard the sharp crack of riflery. He saw flashes of a face—it might’ve been Jim’s—and he remembered the feel of a cold metal handle, attached to something heavy and dense. He remembered yelling too, a small, sweaty hand held tight in his own. He remembered guilt.
“What’s up?” Manny asked. He looked over at Roland and his eyes widened. “Dude, you’re shaking. Don’t tell me you’re flipping out now. We’re too deep into this thing.”
Roland shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a piece of an old memory hitting me in the face. I think I was in town when that fucker went off.
The young man’s pupils grew as big as saucers.
“Ni verga,” he spat. “You’re full of shit.”
Roland shrugged. “I dunno, maybe. It’s just a piece of a memory. I might be confusing it with something else. Sure got triggered by seeing the blast site, though.”
Manny was not satisfied by that answer. “I refuse to believe that someone could watch an atom bomb eviscerate a city and not have a clear memory of it. I had to take anti-rad pills my whole childhood because of that bomb.”
“I don’t have any clear memories, kid. None from further back than about, I guess, five or eight years ago. I don’t have a lot of clear memories since then either, but that’s from the drugs.”
“What the hell happened to you?” Manny asked. “I thought you post-humans all had hard drives running through your blood. Were you too cheap to pay for a photographic memory?”
Roland scratched his neck. He wasn’t itchy. It was a nervous gesture. He was a little fascinated at the fact that this line of questioning made him feel nervous. He really couldn’t remember the last time a conversation had made him feel that way. Weird.
“I got hurt,” was all he could honestly say. “I don’t remember much of anything from before the Revolution. Hell, I don’t really remember the Revolution.”
The line of cars started moving again. Manny popped the car back into drive, and they rolled further into the Heavenly Kingdom. Both men were quiet for a minute, until Roland spoke again.
“That’s why I’m doing this, you know.” He wasn’t sure why he was saying all this, but Roland found he couldn’t stop himself. “Jim, the guy who brought me on, knows some fuckin’ East Coast surgeon who specializes in post-human brains. They think they can give me back my memory. This rescue mission is how I pay for that.”
“Are you sure you want those memories back?” Manny asked.
“The fuck do you mean? I don’t even know who I am, or was, right now. Wouldn’t you want that shit back if you lost it?”
Manny glanced over at him. They locked eyes.
“I don’t know,” the kid said. “You say you’ve killed at least twelve thousand people. I’ve been working as a fixer for the last two years, and I’ve seen a lot of fucked up eyes. Dead eyes on men who’ve done too much killing. But none of them hold a candle to what’s going on there.” He pointed to Roland’s face. “I dunno. I got a feeling your past is one big, fucked-up nightmare. Maybe you’re better off without it.”
Roland was quiet for a while, and Manny didn’t say anything else. They crept along in stops and starts and inched closer to Plano as the sun cracked open the horizon. The kid had a point, Roland decided. He’d worried about the same thing himself since Jim made the offer. Every hour or so he still found himself thinking about the driver of that technical. The man had reeked of love.
And yeah, the guy’d been fighting to establish a Christofascist hell state. But somehow that didn’t mitigate his death in Roland’s head. Most causes were shit. Most men who fought for anything fought for nightmares. That guy, and all his friends, had just been doing what felt right based on the shit lives they’d lived. The same thing had to be true for most of the soldiers and insurgents Roland had killed. How many civilians did you kill, Roland? How many lives did you end just to keep the battle drugs flowing?
When he thought about it that way, he really didn’t want his memories back.
But then, of course, there was Topaz. He loved her so much. Or, rather, the pieces of him that remembered her loved her so much. Roland knew he wanted those memories back. He needed them back. Every time he thought about her face something twisted inside him, as if his guts were being tugged in whatever direction he thought she might be. It was a weird way to feel about a woman he only remembered in fragments.
Roland shook his head in a nervous attempt to shake the thoughts from his mind. Then he stared ahead at the line of cars.
The immigration center was chaotic, crowded, and heavy with the smell of scared humans. It was also a happier place than Roland would have expected. Martyrs in fresh olive drab uniforms with bright golden crosses emblazoned on the arms handed out food, water, and even cups of instant coffee to the adults. They posed for pictures with children. The whole place almost had the air of a party about it. There was someone filming too. Roland guessed he must be a propagandist for the Kingdom, putting together some sort of documentary.
They stood in line for two full hours before it was their turn in front of the intake officer. He was an older man, with a big bushy mustache, red jowls, and a droopy rooster-wattle of a throat. He had a whiny voice that barraged them with questions as soon as they sat down at his desk.
“How many Apostles did Christ have?”
“What was the name of the hill where our Lord was crucified?”
“What is the fifth commandment?”
Manny answered every question while Roland sat there and smiled vacantly like an invalid. They’d decided in the car that “playing dumb” was his best option. He’d probably wind up starting a fight if he talked to the man and, besides, Roland didn’t know shit about the Bible. He didn’t even have any memory fragments of church services.
“And why is it that you’re answering all the questions, young man?” the officer finally asked. “What about your friend here…Aaron, is it?”
“Uh, yeah,” Roland replied, “I just, um. I don’t test so good. Mom said I ain’t a thinker.”
“But you are a Christian, yes?”
“Oh yeah, sir,” he nodded enthusiastically. “I love God. I’m all about God!”
The intake officer narrowed his eyes at Roland. Manny flashed him a look of fury and then quickly turned it into a smile directed at the officer.
“He’s, uh. He’s slow, sir. His momma took care of him but she died in a drone strike two months back. From the SDF. I’m just trying to make sure he’s OK.”
“Mmmh,” the man grunted, then looked to Roland. “I imagine that must make you angry, losing your mother.”
Roland nodded and put on his best facsimile of an angry face. “They’re bad men. I want to hurt them back.”
The intake officer chuckled. “Well, I’ve got good news for you then. The Heavenly Kingdom needs soldiers. I’m sending you both to a training platoon. In a few days you’ll be Martyrs, and you’ll have a chance to get your revenge.”
“Wait,” Manny asked. “We’re…we’re being drafted?”
The officer narrowed his piggy eyes. “The Heavenly Kingdom is fighting for its life, boys. Every person we let in has a job. There are no shirkers here, no layabouts. If you aren’t willing to help build the Kingdom of God on Earth, we have no use for you. And I’ve decided you boys will best serve God in our infantry.”
And just like that, Roland found himself inducted into a military for what was (at least) the second time in his life. The intake officer gave them more papers, signed a mustering order, and sent them off with directions to find the barracks that was, apparently, their new home. Manny handled the rest of the interaction well. He even managed to act enthusiastic, after his first startled outburst. But once they were out of earshot, back in the truck, he started to hyperventilate again. It looked like another panic attack.
“Mierda!” he cursed. “This was such a fucking bad idea!”
“Hey,” Roland patted the kid on the shoulder, “it’s gonna be alright, buddy.” Some aspect of his comforting tactic must have gone wrong, because the kid just looked pissed.
“Do you not realize how fucked this is?” Manny shoved Roland back. “We’re supposed to be effecting a rescue here!” he yelled. “They’re going to have us drilling and training day and night. We’ll be surrounded by soldiers. I thought we’d just be squatting in an apartment, saying some ‘Peace be with yous’ when we went outside. I thought we were gonna track down those hostages in like a day. Now what the fuck are we supposed to do?”
Roland thought about that for a moment. He thought about the Martyrs he’d faced on the battlefield three days ago, in their motley armor and battered, rusted weaponry.
“Look,” he said, “if this were a real army, we’d be fucked. But you’ve seen how these guys fight. They’ve got numbers, and some professionals, but the bulk of their forces are just poor dumb fucks with a week’s worth of training and whatever gun was lying around. We’re not gonna be drilling from dawn ’til dusk.”
He gestured at the truck’s dashboard.
“They’re letting us drive our own fucking truck up there. This ain’t gonna be like a real army. I guarantee you we’ll have time to do our shit. Stay calm. Stick close to me. Do what I do. I’m real fucking good at soldiering. If you follow my lead they’ll love us and our job’ll be that much easier.”
“And what if something goes wrong?” Manny asked. “What if they catch us?”
Roland shrugged.
“If they catch us, then we’ll already be in the middle of their army. That’ll save me so much time.”
Chapter 15
Sasha.
The man on the gurney was the most comprehensively broken human Sasha had ever seen. His jaw had been ripped completely out of its socket and shattered in four places. His eyes had been gouged into horrible smashed-grape looking things. His hands and fingers were all broken, as were his feet and shins. His ears appeared to have been bitten off. His tongue had been severed and the wound cauterized with something that had charred the flesh black.
Sasha hadn’t known a person could take such punishment and survive.
The chart at the end of the bed identified him as Sergeant Lufkin, a two-year veteran Martyr who’d been guarding a checkpoint outside of Dallas. He was conscious; every now and then he’d thrash about and let out a burbling moan. But the man didn’t appear capable of any sort of intelligible communication.
“Well, these aren’t combat injuries,” Dr. Brandt said. “These men look almost like they’ve been in a car wreck, only the damage is too precise and too deliberately targeted. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
It was Sasha’s duty to administer the men’s painkillers, just a tiny drop of morphine each. It wasn’t enough by any proper hospital’s standards. The soldiers were all in clear agony. But the Heavenly Kingdom was short on painkillers and this was the most they could afford to spare for “invalids,” as Dr. Brandt had called them.
